


the human option

by Jennifer-Oksana (JenniferOksana)



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Cancer, Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 01:33:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6136723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenniferOksana/pseuds/Jennifer-Oksana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Telling time with bruises.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the human option

 

 

She can tell time by the bruises on her hands.

Time goes in colors now: the purple-black of a traumatically pulled needle from veins that are as bad as a morphia addict’s, followed by the radioactive bright green-yellow-and-sometimes-pink stage, followed by the dingy brown of almost healed bruises that look little more than tired.

They never quite get past yellow now before another bruise is inflicted, leaving the backs of her hands patchworks of pooled blood and sore muscles. And as the flesh melts away, burned by cancer or some inner fire, she spends a lot of time watching the prominent bump of her wrist grow. As if it were swelling like a pregnancy, a sign of life instead of the harbinger of death.

Either way, it marks the time toward the completion of her life’s work, in a way that matters more than the next breath, the next heartbeat, because those were never guaranteed anyway.


End file.
